Top 10 Figma plugins for UX designers
Figma is the mainstream design tool for UX designers these days, and Figma plugins are impressive tools that aid the process of designing in several ways. Searching the right tools in the massive list of plugins can be difficult. You have to know what to look for. And what if you don’t know what all possibilities are there? Well, here are the top 10 Figma plugins that I have extensively used in recent times.
#1 Unsplash
Images are taking more and more real estate on digital interfaces these days. When designing high-fidelity designs in Figma, using placeholders for images isn’t a suitable option. While many people are aware of the Unsplash website, not many know about the plugin. Unsplash offers a handy plugin on Figma which can be used to search and drop images on Figma files. Images can be dropped directly as fill on frames and shapes as well!
#2 Image Palette
Extracting a color palette from an image is a very common practice among designers. While there are several standalone websites that help in achieving this, it can be tedious to upload images to these websites, generate a palette, and then use it in Figma. Image Palette is an extremely useful plugin that simply generates a color palette from an image in Figma itself. It groups the image and the generated palette together, which can be used as a reference, or even create color styles easily.
#3 Coolors
Coolors is a popular online tool that specializes in generating color palettes using different techniques, among other things. What if the most widely used functionality of Coolors was available in Figma? The Coolors plugin does exactly this. It helps in searching and creating palettes and inserting them right in the Figma canvas.
#4 ColorLabels
Generating palettes and selecting colors is fine, but what about naming them? Oftentimes, it can be difficult to name colors. There’s no need to worry because ColorLabels is the savior here. This plugin can be used to generate labels for any number of colors. The colors should fill any shape or frame and that’s it. The plugin also provides options to select the type of name and values to include in the label.
#5 Noisy Gradients
If plain colors don’t do the job, gradients can be a way to add that extra touch of creativity. And a noisy gradient is just another cherry on top. The Noisy Gradients plugin offers a simple way to generate such gradients. The plugin offers an option to choose colors to be used in the gradient or generate randomly.
#6 Table Creator
Whether it is for the interface itself, or just for any documentation, we all know how difficult and painful it can be to create and design tables in Figma. The Table Creator plugin helps in creating tables easily. It even generates Figma components for cells and rows, so that the look and feel of the table can be changed by altering these components.
#7 Autoflow
I think it is safe to say that all UX designers have tried creating some kind of flow chart or a diagram on Figma at least once. And tried to use the default arrow and line tool to connect shapes. Well, that’s one way to do it. A much more efficient way is to use the Autoflow plugin. And it works really well. Even when the shapes are moved, they still are connected. The plugin also allows customization of the connector.
#8 Phosphor Icons
Let’s admit it, finding icon packs can be tricky. Searching the web for icon libraries and downloading them, or digging the Figma Community to grab the icon set file is too much experimental. Phosphor Icons is an amazing icon library (developer-friendly as well!) available on the web and as a Figma plugin. There are several variants for the whole icon set, so that’s one thing sorted!
#9 LottieFiles
LottieFiles is a pretty popular website that offers a huge set of animations for digital use. They also offer a Figma plugin, which is a convenient way to insert animations in Figma designs. The plugin provides functionality to customize and tweak animations, and access saved collections by logging in.
#10 html.to.design
Pulling screenshots into a Figma file is an old-fashioned way of doing things. This super helpful plugin called html.to.design is here. Any webpage out there on the Internet can be converted to a Figma design. How cool is that! Simply enter the URL, choose the viewport settings, and voila — this plugin will generate a complete Figma design. These designs do not use auto layout, which is a bummer. Regardless, it can be definitely useful.
And there you have it. 10 Figma plugins that will make your job as a UX designer easy.
